- DC: Cultists rally in support of antichrist
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“The administration of United States President Donald Trump has hosted a nine-hour prayer event on the National Mall in Washington, DC, as part of its efforts to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary. Sunday’s event was called ‘Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving,’ and it took place from 9am to 6pm Eastern US time (13:00 to 22:00 GMT). On the jubilee’s website, organisers explained that their aim was to mark ‘rededication of our country as One Nation to God.’ … Members of the Trump administration, including the president himself, also recorded video messages that were broadcast from the stage. Trump’s video showed him seated behind the Resolute Desk in the White House, reciting a speech from the Book of Chronicles that God gave to King Solomon, promising protection to his followers and destruction to those who forsake him.” (05/17/26)
- NYC: Woman gives birth in courtroom during drug charge arraignment
Source: New York Post
“A pregnant woman shockingly delivered a baby boy in the middle of a packed Brooklyn courtroom while waiting to be arraigned on a drug possession charge. Samantha Randazzo, 33, went into labor surrounded by police officers, prosecutors and court personnel during her arraignment in Brooklyn criminal court on Friday night, according to a joint statement from the Legal Aid Society and several other public defender organizations. … The Legal Aid Society and Brooklyn Defender Services — which each had attorneys in the courtroom for other arraignments — claimed Randazzo was shackled and handcuffed during the delivery without ‘adequate medical care, privacy, or dignity.'” (05/17/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/05/17/us-news/woman-gives-birth-on-courtroom-bench-during-nyc-arraignment/
- Spain: Conservatives lose majority in Andalusia, making far-right deal likely
Source: Politico
“The conservative People’s Party won an election in Spain’s Andalusia region but looks to have lost its majority in the local parliament, in a setback for the party’s moderates as they prepare for next year’s general election. The underwhelming result — which saw the People’s Party lose seats to its left and to its right — means it will now almost certainly need the backing of the far-right Vox party in order to form a new government.” (05/17/26)
- Hantavirus-stricken cruise ship docks in the Netherlands for disinfection
Source: SFGate
“The cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak has docked at the Dutch port of Rotterdam for disinfection, wrapping up a troubled journey that put international health authorities on alert. The MV Hondius was carrying 25 crew members and two medical personnel as it reached Rotterdam on Monday morning, after all the passengers disembarked elsewhere. An Associated Press journalist saw people board the boat via pier wearing white hazardous materials suits. A short distance from where the ship docked, authorities had set up 25 white containers along the water in between a line of windmills. The crew will enter immediate quarantine, with those who cannot be repatriated spending their time in quarantine in these containers with satellite internet and catering, said the port’s harbor master, René de Vries.” (05/18/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/hantavirus-stricken-cruise-ship-expected-to-22263980.php
- CA: Oakland city administrator resigns after “degrading and unprofessional communications”
Source: KRON 4 News
“Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee’s office announced the resignation of former city administrator Jestin Johnson after finding ‘degrading and unprofessional communications’ involving Johnson. ‘We promptly conducted our own investigation and verified these communications, which are wholly incompatible with the values of this administration and those of the people of Oakland,’ Lee said in a statement. ‘Under my watch, I will not tolerate transgressions of this nature.’ It was unclear what exactly was in the messages.” (05/17/26)
- Black Sea: Russian drone allegedly strikes Chinese ship
Source: Independent [UK]
“Russia has attacked a Chinese-owned cargo ship that was headed for a Ukrainian port, according to Reuters, a move which could anger one of Moscow’s most important allies in Beijing. The Russian drone struck the KSL DEYANG vessel flying under Marshall Islands flag off the coast of Ukraine early on Monday, a source told the news agency. The vessel was did not contain cargo and was bound for Ukraine’s Pivdennyi port in the Odesa region where it was to load iron ore concentrate. The vessel did not sustain significant damage, there were no casualties and the fire caused by the strike was extinguished by the crew, the source added.” (05/18/26)
- Bitcoin slips below $77k as oil surge, rising yields hit risk appetite
Source: Investing.com
“Bitcoin fell below $77,000 on Monday, extending weekend losses as surging global bond yields and rising oil prices linked to escalating Iran tensions weakened appetite for riskier assets. The world’s largest cryptocurrency last traded 1.5% lower at $76,946.6 by 00:54 ET (04:54 GMT), its lowest level since May 1. Bitcoin briefly climbed above $80,000 last week but failed to sustain momentum.” (05/18/26)
- Oil touches two-week high after drone attack on UAE nuclear power plant
Source: Reuters
“Oil prices extended gains on Monday, driven by increasingly bleak prospects for peace in the Middle East after an attack on a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates. … Drone attacks on the UAE and Saudi Arabia and the rhetoric from the United States and Iran raised concerns of an escalation in the conflict. Saudi Arabia, which intercepted three drones that entered from Iraqi airspace, warned it would take the necessary operational measures to respond to any attempt to violate its sovereignty and security. Emirati officials, meanwhile, said they were investigating the source of the strike on the Barakah nuclear power plant, adding that the UAE had the right to respond to what it said were ‘terrorist attacks.'” (05/17/26)
- LA: Cassidy knocked out of GOP Senate primary; Trump-backed Letlow, Fleming make runoff
Source: SFGate
“U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow advanced to a runoff in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary Saturday, capitalizing on the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement in another attempt to purge his party of people he views as disloyal. State Treasurer John Fleming came in second to join her in the next round of voting. Trump supported Letlow over incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.” (05/16/26)
- ICC denies “inaccurate” report it is seeking new warrants against Israeli regime officials
Source: Jerusalem Post [Jerusalem]
“The International Criminal Court (ICC) has denied that it had issued new arrest warrants for Israeli political and military officials, following a Haaretz report published on Sunday claiming the Hague has quietly sought arrest warrants against several Israeli officials. According to the Haaretz report, citing a diplomatic source, the warrants target three Israeli politicians and two IDF officials. ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet said in a note to journalists that the report, in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, was not accurate, and the court ‘denies the issuance of new arrest warrants in the situation in the state of Palestine.'” (05/17/26)
- Trump whines at Boebert for supporting Massie
Source: Fox News
“President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a longtime ally of the president, and threatened to back a primary challenger after she campaigned for one of his top Republican rivals. Trump lashed out on Truth Social against Boebert, whom he previously endorsed for reelection, just hours after she campaigned with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics in Congress. ‘Is anyone interested in running against Weak Minded Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District?’ Trump wrote. The president criticized Boebert for supporting Massie, whose primary challenger, retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, has Trump’s endorsement.” (05/17/26)
- Hucksters Amongst Us
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen“Many people are writing about why Americans have lost trust in universities. There are, of course, financial reasons, including — at least plausibly — the now higher unemployment rates of recent college grads and the ever-increasing cost of tuition. I leave these to the side. I’ve written about this before but here quickly lay out what I see as a major reason for the loss of trust. Start with the fact that many universities have stopped providing the service they were meant to — and historically did — provide. That service? Providing a system of education that creates well rounded individuals capable of independent critical thinking applicable to anything and which expands the intellectual abilities. Those universities have switched to providing career-specific education. Or what they think is career-specific education.” (05/17/26)
https://prosociallibertarians.substack.com/p/hucksters-amongst-us
- Therapy culture is turning politics into a national nervous breakdown
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Alpert“As a psychotherapist, I increasingly see people interpreting political disagreement through a framework usually reserved for emotional threat and psychological harm. Opponents are no longer simply viewed as wrong. They’re experienced as toxic, dangerous, unsafe, narcissistic or morally beyond redemption. Once that shift happens, the emotional intensity rises quickly. People stop feeling like fellow citizens with different ideas and start feeling like threats. … Concepts like ‘trauma,’ ‘safety,’ ‘validation,’ ‘triggering’ and ‘boundaries’ can be useful in the right context. But when applied too broadly, they begin subtly transforming disagreement itself into something psychologically destabilizing. That shift has enormous consequences.” (05/17/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/therapy-culture-turning-politics-national-nervous-breakdown
- Mental Illness May be a Myth, but Trauma is a Societal Crisis
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“As [Thomas] Szasz shows, this conspiracy to domesticate civilization’s neurological malcontents is achieved by declaring our numerous eccentricities to be medical ailments treatable by a variety of forms of therapeutic coercion, from the simple quick fix of pharmaceutical intervention to our involuntary internment at glorified prison camps deemed inpatient facilities. Szasz didn’t reject psychotherapy entirely, however. In fact, he encouraged its widespread use as a means for consenting adults to seek outside guidance in order to ‘learn more about themselves, others and life.’ In other words, Dr. Szasz advocated that therapists behave more like shamans than priests while deriding any notion of mental health being pathologized as a corrupt junk science that deprives the individual of autonomy and basic human dignity.” (05/17/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/05/mental-illness-may-be-myth-but-trauma.html
- So how much does recycling really, really, cost?
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall“Recycling some things is sensible, others not so much. Recycling the 4 tonne rare earth magnet in an ocean going windmill makes excellent sense. Pulling the tiny rare earth magnets out of EarPods very much less. The rare earth content of a metal halide bulb is in the milligrammes range — collecting a million lightbulbs to produce a few kg of something worth perhaps $300 is insane. The overall aim is, after all, to preserve resources. Which is entirely fine, obviously, but we must be accurate about what is a resource that must be saved. The human effort which goes into this work is, we insist, one such resource that must be added into the calculation. Collecting a 4 tonne magnet, collecting 1 million lightbulbs. The time people must spend sorting household rubbish for recycling is one of those resources.” (05/17/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/so-how-much-does-recycling-really-really-cost
- Are You Brave Enough for Nonviolence?
Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon“People who care, people who don’t. Un-realism and ignore-ance. If you aren’t comfortable now, why were you comfortable before?” (05/17/26)
https://www.the-reframe.com/are-you-brave-enough-for-nonviolence
- The President of Peace Makes War on the Planet
Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt“Once upon a time, such wildly futuristic madness would have been left to the most dystopian of science-fiction novels — and undoubtedly not very popular ones at that, since such a plot and such a president would (once upon a time) have seemed far too unrealistic even for fiction. But now, thanks to President Donald J. Trump, the United States of America, in addition to all its other warring acts of recent months, is distinctly at war — and there’s no other adequate word for it — with Planet Earth (at least as a habitable place for future versions of us).” (05/17/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/the-president-of-peace-makes-war-on-the-planet/
- Good Trade Deals Make Good Neighbors
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott“After a recent Andean Community (CAN) ruling, Ecuador and Colombia have been forced into a climbdown from an escalating trade war that has been heating up since the beginning of 2026. … CAN, formed in 1969 following the Cartagena Agreement and composed of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Per — since then expanding to include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay as associate members and Chile leaving in 1976 — is explicitly set up to deal with trade in goods and services, the regulation of a customs union between members, a common market, and even foreign policy.” (05/17/26)
https://fee.org/articles/good-trade-deals-make-good-neighbors/
- Computer “Age Verification” is About Political Control, Not Child Safety
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“Because California is the ‘authoritarian law idea? Hold my beer!’ state, governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation last October which requires operating system providers to collect age information on each new user account, and provide an API that lets Internet platforms and app developers access that information so as to exclude users Gavin Newsom doesn’t think should be using those platforms and apps [“for the chillllllllllldren”]. It’s almost, but not quite, funny. It’s almost funny because it won’t take the chillllllllllldren in question more than a few minutes to figure out ways around this kind of thing. ‘Age verification’ laws are, and always have been, political fantasy, as you know yourself if you were ever a 19-year-old college student who used a fake ID to get into a nightclub. It’s not quite funny because it isn’t, and never was, about ‘the chillllllllllldren.'” (05/17/26)
- Hobbes’s Self-Defeating Theory
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter“Like it or not, for several centuries now, Hobbes’s nation-state concept has been the default paradigm and context for modern people whenever they think about government. Without having ever read Hobbes, people will unknowingly repeat his assumptions, presuppositions, concerns, and arguments for the state. Yet — with some simple logic and using Hobbes’s own presuppositions — we can internally critique Hobbes’s argument and see that his proposed solution of the state solves none of the problems he presents.” (05/15/26)
- The Endless Search for Emergency Tariff Authority
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert“The legal foundation for taxing every import into the US has now rested, at various points in the past year, on a 1977 emergency powers law, a 1974 statute designed for a monetary system that no longer exists, and — if the administration’s next move is what trade lawyers expect — a Depression-era provision that has never once been used to impose actual tariffs in almost a century. At some point, running out of legal justifications is a signal worth heeding.” (05/15/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-endless-search-for-emergency-tariff-authority/
- Plunder, War Profiteering, and Spirit Airlines
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Charles Goyette“Someone, somewhere is making a lot of money. It’s the most brazen plunder since Hillary Clinton was trading cattle futures in Little Rock. Or since Nancy Pelosi was placing stock trades. Come to think of it, there seems to be a whole lot of plunder going on in the world of politics. It’s not just oil in the ‘Age of Trump.’ As President Ronald Reagan’s budget director and a Wall Street veteran, David Stockman is a seasoned observer of political plunder. When Donald Trump suddenly offered up the suggestion that ‘we’ (the taxpayers) buy struggling Spirit Airlines, Stockman wrote a piece called, ‘Was It You, Barron? Someone Made 3.5X On The Donald’s Spirit Airlines Socialism.’ This chart shows Spirit Holdings share price spiking when Trump started his takeover talk on April 21 (and then quickly collapsing).” (05/15/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/plunder-war-profiteering-and-spirit-airlines
- Is France really poorer than Mississippi?
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle“I’m not, alas, in Paris right now. But I can certainly imagine myself in a Parisian cafe, enjoying some steak frites and a glass of wine while taking in the glorious streetscape. What’s harder to imagine is soaking in all that ambiance and thinking, ‘Yeah, this place is definitely poorer than Mississippi.’ No, seriously, that’s what gross domestic product statistics suggest. In 2024, France had a per capita GDP of $46,103. Mississippi’s was $55,876. As recently as 10 years ago, French GDP was ahead ($37,024 versus $36,184), but since then U.S. GDP and productivity have grown significantly faster than Western Europe’s. This fact has caused much social media friction between smug Americans and defensive Europeans (allied with American progressives) who argue that you can’t measure what makes their way of life better.” (05/17/26)
- Blue state bill targets homeschoolers in latest government power grab
Source: Fox News
by Corey DeAngelis“After decades of parental rights victories, Connecticut may become the first state to go backwards on homeschool freedom in the past 50 years. The Connecticut Senate advanced a bill attacking homeschooling families by a vote of 22 to 14, mostly along party lines. Three Democrats joined all Republicans in opposition. The measure cleared the House 96-53 last week, with four Democrats crossing the aisle to stand with Republicans. Those margins fall short of the two-thirds supermajority required in both chambers to override a gubernatorial veto. Connecticut families now have only one remaining safeguard. Leadership should respect the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children and block this Orwellian legislation.” (05/15/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/blue-state-bill-targets-homeschoolers-latest-government-power-grab
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/17/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“US Creating Pretexts for Attack on Cuba, Trump Threatens To Restart Iran Bombing, and More.” (05/17/26)
- Fountainhead Forum, episode 448
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Ryan Walters on the Presidency of Warren Harding.” (05/17/26)
https://rumble.com/v79zdbg-ff-448-ryan-walters-on-the-presidency-of-warren-harding.html
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 05/17/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Trump in China, Iran War on the Horizon?” (05/17/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/the-kyle-anzalone-show-trump-in-china-iran-war-on-the-horizon
- Mutual Exchange Radio, 05/16/26
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
“Jason Lee Byas on Justice Beyond the State.” (05/16/26)
https://mutualexchangeradio.libsyn.com/jason-lee-byas-on-justice-beyond-the-state